One class of radio access network architectures exploits point-to-point fiber links between the cell sites and a centralized base-band pool. These links carry common public radio interface (CPRI) traffic between remote radio-heads (RRH) and the pooled base-band functionality. Some of the key characteristics of this solution are described herein. It is known that CPRI is a time-division multiplexing (TDM)-based protocol with a hyper-frame structure, which contains a number of antenna containers (AxCs), control channels, and other protocol elements, and each AxC carries raw in-phase and quadrature (I&Q) data for a particular antenna. Due to the strict synchronization requirements for radio-frame alignment at the RRH (e.g., 65 ns for 3GPP) and the high capacity required to carry traffic for multiple RRHs, Point-to-Point (PtP) fiber is the only practical solution for many deployments that is currently available. CPRI bit-rates (e.g., 9.8304, 6.144, 4.9152, 3.072, 2.4576, 1.2288, 0.6144 Gb/s) differ from both Ethernet and Fiber Channels. The introduction of advanced mobile platforms (e.g., LTE, small cells, femto-cells, etc.) greatly increases the number of cell sites in a given geographical area, which can result in a large increase in the number of back-haul connections. For example, there are projections for an urban cloud radio-access network (CRAN) central office or a baseband pool terminating more than 10 k PtP CPRI fiber links. The deployment of small-cell base stations is highly cost sensitive, since they are designed for a relatively small number of concurrent users and are expected to be deployed in large numbers in many networks.